Cisco Cisco WebEx Social for Mobile White Paper
Forrester Consulting
Integrated Cloud Applications Have The Potential To Boost Employee Collaboration And Business Agility
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Figure 2
Decision-Makers View SaaS As A Way To Fill Gaps In Their Collaboration Portfolio
Decision-Makers View SaaS As A Way To Fill Gaps In Their Collaboration Portfolio
Base: 298 North American midmarket packaged application decision-makers who plan to
implement collaboration software at their organizations or have already done so
Source: Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2011, Forrester Research, Inc.
The prospect of surrendering the management of any business applications by moving them into a multitenant
environment was unthinkable for many organizations just a few short years ago. So what has changed? Business
leaders’ thinking about the cloud has matured, particularly in the midmarket. Small and medium-size business
packaged application decision-makers have moved beyond mere cost savings. They tell Forrester that SaaS, in
general, improves business agility (72%), allows them to focus resources on more important projects (65%), delivers
new features more rapidly (59%), and enables them to support a large number of mobile and remote workers (50%)
(see Figure 3). This indicates that these decision-makers view the cloud as a way to make their businesses more
nimble and responsive to changes in market dynamics, the workforce, and employee needs. For example, an online
team workspace could allow a company’s mobile sales force to access new collateral that the marketing team creates
in response to customer feedback to the original pitch.
environment was unthinkable for many organizations just a few short years ago. So what has changed? Business
leaders’ thinking about the cloud has matured, particularly in the midmarket. Small and medium-size business
packaged application decision-makers have moved beyond mere cost savings. They tell Forrester that SaaS, in
general, improves business agility (72%), allows them to focus resources on more important projects (65%), delivers
new features more rapidly (59%), and enables them to support a large number of mobile and remote workers (50%)
(see Figure 3). This indicates that these decision-makers view the cloud as a way to make their businesses more
nimble and responsive to changes in market dynamics, the workforce, and employee needs. For example, an online
team workspace could allow a company’s mobile sales force to access new collateral that the marketing team creates
in response to customer feedback to the original pitch.
“What are your firm's plans to use SaaS to complement or replace your collaboration software?”
Plan to or
currently
using
collaboration
SaaS to
some extent
53%
No plans to
use SaaS
43%
Don’t know
4%
16%
17%
7%
14%
Replace
most/all with
SaaS
Complement
with SaaS
Planning within two years
Already using